August 11, 2007

Jerusalem — Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will
allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it — separately.

There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete
patterned to look like Jerusalem stones, an effort at beautification indicating that the road
is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits; the Palestinian side has few.

The point of the road, according to those who planned it under former Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, is to permit Israel to build more settlements around East Jerusalem, cutting the city
off from the West Bank, but allowing Palestinians to travel unimpeded north and south through
Israeli-held land. “The Americans demanded from Sharon contiguity for a Palestinian state,”
said Shaul Arieli, a reserve colonel in the army who participated in the 2000 Camp David
negotiations and specializes in maps. “This road was Sharon’s answer, to build a road for
Palestinians between Ramallah and Bethlehem but not to Jerusalem. This was how to connect the
West Bank while keeping Jerusalem united and not giving Palestinians any blanket permission to
enter East Jerusalem.” Mr. Sharon talked of “transportational contiguity” for Palestinians in
a future Palestinian state, meaning that although Israeli settlements would jut into the area,
Palestinian cars on the road would pass unimpeded through Israeli-controlled territory and
even cross through areas enclosed by the Israeli separation barrier.

The vast majority of Palestinians, unlike Israeli settlers, will not be able to exit in areas
surrounded by the barrier or travel into Jerusalem, even into the eastern part of the city,
which Israel took over in 1967.

The road does that by having Palestinian traffic continue through underpasses and over
bridges, while Israeli traffic will have interchanges allowing turns onto access roads.
Palestinians with Israeli identity cards or special permits for Jerusalem will be able to use
the Israeli side of the road.

The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently made conciliatory gestures to the
Palestinians and says it wants to do what it can to ease the creation of a Palestinian state.
But Mr. Olmert, like Mr. Sharon, has said that Israel intends to keep the land to the east of
Jerusalem.

To Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer who advises an Israeli advocacy group called Ir Amim, which
works for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in Jerusalem, the road suggests an ominous map of
the future. It is one in which Israel keeps nearly all of East Jerusalem and a ring of Israeli
settlements surrounding it, providing a cordon of Israelis between largely Arab East Jerusalem
and the rest of the West Bank, which will become part of a future Palestinian state.

In a final settlement, Israel is expected to offer the Palestinians land swaps elsewhere to
compensate.

The road will allow Israeli settlers living in the north, near Ramallah, to move quickly into
Jerusalem, protected from the Palestinians who surround them. It also helps ensure that the
large settlement of Maale Adumim — a suburb of 32,000 people east of Jerusalem, where most of
its residents work — will remain under Israeli control, along with the currently empty area of
4.6 square miles known as E1, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, which Israel also intends to
keep.

For the Palestinians, the road will connect the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
In a future that may have fewer checkpoints, they could travel directly from Ramallah north of
Jerusalem to Bethlehem south of it — but without being allowed to enter either Jerusalem or
the Maale Adumim settlement bloc. “To me, this road is a move to create borders, to change
final status,” Mr. Seidemann said, referring to unresolved issues regarding borders, refugees
and the fate of Jerusalem. “It’s to allow Maale Adumim and E1 into Jerusalem but be able to
say, ‘See, we’re treating the Palestinians well — there’s geographical contiguity.’ ” Measure
it yourself, he said. “The Palestinian road is 16 meters wide,” or 52 feet, he added. “The
Israeli theory of a contiguous Palestinian state is 16 meters wide.”

Khalil Tufakji, a prominent Palestinian geographer, says the road “is part of Sharon’s plan:
two states in one state, so the Israelis and the Palestinians each have their own roads.” The
Palestinians, Mr. Tufakji said, “will have no connection with the Israelis, but travel through
tunnels and over bridges, while the Israelis will travel through Palestinian land without
seeing an Arab.”

In the end, he said, “there is no Palestinian state, even though the Israelis speak of one.”
Instead, he said, “there will be a settler state and a Palestinian built-up area, divided into
three sectors, cut by fingers of Israeli settlement and connected only by narrow roads.”

Asked for comment, David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said: “The security
arrangements on these roads are in place to protect the citizens of Israel. And they are not
connected to any other matter.”

A spokesman for the Israeli military’s civil administration department pointed out that
Palestinians with permits to enter Israel could use the Israeli side of the road, and that for
ordinary Palestinians, the road will be a quicker, better route from north to south than any
current route.

There are numerous roads that only Israelis and Israeli-permit holders can travel on, but none
segregated like this one.

E1 has been a key battleground in the struggle over control of Jerusalem. Some, like Martin S.
Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel now running the Saban Center at the Brookings
Institution, argue that Israel should yield E1 to the Palestinians. “E1 is a critical issue in
maintaining the territorial integrity and contiguity of the West Bank with East Jerusalem —
it’s the only place where it’s possible to do that,” he said.

Israel has promised the United States that it will not build housing now in E1, freezing a
plan to construct 3,500 homes. But Israel is completing a large, four-story police station on
a commanding hill in E1, intended to be the main police headquarters for the West Bank, and it
is laying down electrical and water lines for future development.

And it is building this road.

What is nearly finished now, awaiting the fixing of lights and the completing of tunnels and
underpasses, stretches about 2.4 miles.

The road is currently open to the West Bank, but it cuts through the intended path of the
Israeli separation barrier, which has not yet been built around E1 or Maale Adumim.

Presuming that the barrier will be completed, the road will be a kind of umbilical cord that
cuts through Israeli-controlled and walled territory to connect the two parts of the West
Bank. “Now there’s a big gap in the barrier between Azzariya and Shuafat,” of about 2.4 to 3
miles, “and Israel hasn’t started to build the fence around Maale Adumim,” said Mr. Arieli,
the reserve colonel. “But this road will be the answer if and when Israel builds the fence
around Maale Adumim. You see that Israel is creating the conditions for the future. They try
to take advantage of the current situation to prepare the infrastructure for the right time to
start building E1.” Mr. Seidemann believes that Mr. Olmert, facing many problems now, will not
start building in E1, but that the leader of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, if he is elected prime
minister, might do so. Mr. Netanyahu said in 2005 that he would build in E1 no matter what
Washington thought.

Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, a spokeswoman for the American Consulate in Jerusalem, repeated
American policy that Palestinians should be allowed to travel more easily through the West
Bank “consistent with the need to maintain security.” Asked if this road predetermines final
status, she said, “The U.S. government has encouraged the parties to avoid any actions that
would predetermine permanent status,” but said she was not authorized to comment more
specifically.

Mr. Tufakji said he had become cynical about the way Israel builds for the future it defines,
no matter what it promises Washington. He sees a West Bank divided into three parts by Israeli
settlement blocs, the most important of which are Maale Adumim and E1, around the capital that
both peoples claim as their own. “Israel is building the infrastructure to keep E1, to
surround Jerusalem,” he said. “They are working to have an area of minimum Palestinians and
maximum Israelis.”